Before there were web logs there were diaries, journals, and memoirs. Midland Passages is a narrative of life shaped in the small towns of the American heartland. "I'm bound away 'cross the wide Missouri."

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Blanche DuBois Drives A Car

I was coming back from visiting a lawyer friend downtown. The interstate sweeps in a big curve over Southwest Boulevard at the state line. As it rounds the corner, the on-ramp from Cambridge Circle runs parallel to the right lane of the interstate and becomes the off-ramp for Rainbow Boulevard. There is no merge lane. There is no exit. Only a long fourth lane. A person coming up the ramp from Cambridge Circle has almost a half-mile to match speeds with the interstate traffic and switch one lane to the left as the fourth lane becomes an exit only at Rainbow.

As I came around the curve a young woman in a nice older model Toyota occupied the on-ramp from Cambridge. As the two lanes paralleled, she sat in a position just ahead and to the right, her trunk alongside my right front tire, separated only by the flicker of the white line marking the lanes.

Now, I figure she needs to move over one lane. Most people entering at Cambridge do. All that was required was for the nice young woman to ease off the gas for a fraction of a second (or speed up a little, I wasn’t going very fast), create a separation between our cars, signal, and safely change her lane.

For a full fifteen seconds we traveled as a twosome in tango, all the while thinking that the lane-changer would sensibly avoid the collision through a proper adjustment of speed. But no. There we stayed, not a dance step between us.

Maybe she would depart at Rainbow. Maybe we would collide. Maybe it was time to do something else. Nervously, I let my partner go. I slowed.

She moved ahead and over into my lane, oblivious of her escape from danger. Merging into traffic, it seems to her, must always depend upon the kindness of strangers.

I fumed about this the rest of the way home and told the story to my wife. She smiled, the way that wise Latina women smile, and explained that I had just lost at Chicken.

Our Current Feature

Previous Memoirs

The Antarctic Journal of a Young Man (1975) by S. A. McCormick begins on December 16, 2006.

Loose Ends (1929-1959) by K.A. McCormick begins on April 13, 2007.

Life Sketch (1863-1902) by H.A. McCormick, Sr. begins on April 29, 2007.

Excerpts from the 1918 Wynot Tribune begin on June 2, 2007. The Wynot Tribune was published by H.A. McCormick, Sr.

Under One Roof is a father and son comparison of the same small town events as viewed from both sides of the generation gap. It begins on September 15, 2007.

Auburn and Nemaha County, Soicial and Economic Trends, 1960-2003 begins on August 10, 2008. This is original research by Ken McCormick on the recent economic history of small-town Auburn, the county seat of Nemaha County, Nebraska. Although it is strictly the effort of an amateur historian (not being peer-reviewed or anything), Mr. McCormick's analysis and conclusions stand on their own merit.

The Prairie Curmudgeon. Having finally run out of material about small towns in the Midlands, I am temporarily forced to publish crusty, ill-tempered opinions of old men.

Eduard of Nemaha, a Comedy in Five Acts. This play was begun in 1973. Nemaha and Peru are two small towns in southeast Nebraska. For those of you who have perused The Antarctic Journal of a Young Man, you have already met Debrushka.

Richard M. Nixon, a Play in Five Acts

This play was concieved in 1973. It is an impression of the great tapestry of news and history as perceieved from the distance of a small town in the Midlands.